Mario Firmenich

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Mario Eduardo Firmenich, founder of Montoneros, was born in Buenos Aires on January 24, 1948). He attended High school at the prestigious Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires where he joined the right-wing Catholic Youth Students organization. It was during those years that Firmenich met the Jesuit priest Carlos Mugica, who influenced Firmenich on his conversion to left-wing thinking, becoming an activist in the Peronist Justicialist Party . Firmenich remained a good friend of Mugica until the priest's murder in 1974 by the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance.

On May 29, 1970, Firmenich took part in Operación Pindapoy, which consisted of the kidnapping and makeshift-trial of former president Pedro Aramburu. Aramburu was later executed by Firmenich. For a brief period, in 1973, Montoneros gaines legitimacy under the short-live presidency of Héctor Cámpora. Following the death of Juan Peron in July 1974, Montoneros, now lead almost exclusively by Firmenich was no longer legitimate and the organization went underground.

A year after the military coup lead by General Jorge Rafael Videla in 1976, Firmenich went into exile in Rome, Mexico and Cuba. In 1978 he organized a campaign before the Soccer World Cup in order to make the international community aware of the human-rights abuses by the military junta. The same year, he reorganized the Montoneros into a political and a military branch.

In 1979, while Firmenich was still in exile, the Montoneros led a large offensive against the Military Junta, which resulted in the capture and death of many of the remaining members of the organization. Firmenich visited the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua.

Firmenich was captured in Brazil, during the administration of Argetine president Raúl Alfonsín. He was extradited under charges of "terrorism" and "subversion" triald in Buenos Aires and condemned to serve 30 years in prison along with other terrorist referents such as Fernando Vaca Narvaja, Enrique Gorriarán Merlo and Roberto Perdía. While in prison he led the Peronismo Revolucionario, an branch of the Partido Justicialista which endorsed the objectives of the peronist-left of the 1970s.

Excluded from president Carlos Menem's first amnesty of guerrilla leaders and military officers, he was released on December 29, 1990. He has long had to face accusations from among survivors of Argentina's various guerrilla movements that he was a double agent, working for the Argentine security forces all along. Firmenich lives today near Barcelona, Spain.

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